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Can anyone convince me to use Rust over Go, or the other way around? My target machines range from i7s with massive amounts of RAM to Raspberry Pi with slightl

Can anyone convince me to use Rust over Go, or the other way around? My target machines range from i7s with massive amounts of RAM to Raspberry Pi with slightly-less-massive amounts of RAM.

Drdrdrq 10y ago
Well, I can't do that (haven't used any of them enough for that) but I find it telling that Rust is missing from the slide where they compare the languages... :)
FlyingSnake 10y ago
> Rust over Go Rust: Best suited for writing OS, network stack, embedded systems, and webservers like Nginx. Go: Best suited for writing micro-services, CRUD apps, API servers etc pick your poison
- egeozcan 10y ago
  I did write a CRUD app with Go and after that experience, IMHO, for CRUD apps, one is better off with a dynamic language (JS, Ruby, Python) or a static one which supports generics (C#, Java) or Macros (Nim).
  - fortytw2 10y ago
    Right on. Go is best suited for network-heavy, concurrent applications (infrastructure systems, databases, OS-tools), or software that needs to be dead easy to set up / deploy (single static binary, free cross-platform compilation). If you want to go build a CRUD app, use RoR/Django/Whatever(tm) and be happy with it
shadowmint 10y ago
I think the tldr; of this (often raised...) argument boils down to: Don't use rust if you're asking that question. If you could implement your solution in go or rust, then go is probably a more appropriate choice; it's a good high level solution for high level problems. Rust is not a good solution for high level problems; it's a good solution for low level problems where go would be a terrible choice; and it's a good solution for high level problems where other choices are even worse (eg. C++). They're both good languages, and you'll learn way more from picking up rust than you will from picking up go, so if you're just screwing around and want to learn a language this year, absolutely, pick rust or clojure. Go isn't on the list for 'interesting programming languages'. ...but if you have an actual problem you're trying to solve, I would be hard pressed to enumerate the reasons why you would pick rust if the problem was solvable using go. Maybe because your C dependencies would be easier to call from rust than go? That's all I can think of.
- stymaar 10y ago
  > Rust is not a good solution for high level problems Who is saying that ? Not the Rust team, nor the Rust users … Rust is a general purpose programming language, and it's pretty high-level (in terms of features, think about functional programming for instance). The only reason I wouldn't advise everyone to write their stuff in Rust atm, is the youth of the ecosystem (which is growing rapidly, but is still a bit too early-stage): their is no intrinsic limitation in the language that make Rust «not a good solution».
  - shadowmint 10y ago
    I'm saying it. The piston developers are doing what right now? Writing a new programming language (dyon). Why are they doing that? Because rust is great for prototyping games in? no. ...rust is verbose. It is statically typed, it is less productive than some other languages and it is hard to learn. Now, you get a whole lot of other benefits in exchange for that, absolutely, and technically speaking, rust is a super awesome and sophisticated language. ...but right now, it has neither the ecosystem nor simplicity for picking up and practically solving high level problems. If you have a problem, right now, you want to solve: pick go. ...unless your problem is something that rust would be better at, and those things are low level things, like building game engines, not high level things like building web applications and cross platform desktop chat applications or machine learning solutions to driving cars. You can build high level applications in rust, and in C++; the point I'm making is that unless you actually have a reason for picking them (and there are plenty...), don't. Pick the tool for the job; rust is a great tool for the right job. Go is a better tool for a lot of applications; and a totally useless one for others. /shrug. We don't need to pretend rust is general high level language you should pick up and use for any problem domain. It's not. You're shooting yourself in the foot if you use it as though it was.
    - stymaar 10y ago
      > The piston developers are doing what right now? Writing a new programming language (dyon). Why are they doing that? Because rust is great for prototyping games in? I agree with that, Rust is not a scripting language. Dynamically-typed scripting languages have proven their efficiency for prototyping. > rust is verbose. It is statically type, it is less productive than some other languages Than scripting languages yes, but it's exactly on the same side than Go on this point. Scripting languages are extremely convenient for small projects, but are more difficult to maintain in the long run if the project grows too big. (I personally live coding JavaScript, and a the project grows we are progressively add a static-typing layer (flowtype.org) to our code for the sake of maintenance). > it has neither the ecosystem nor simplicity for picking up and practically solving high level problems. There is a real trade-off between scripting languages (Python, Ruby and Nodejs), and statically-typed ones (Java, Go, and Rust), but it's not related to being high-level or not. In term of abstractions and features, Rust is at least as high-level as Java & Go. > If you have a problem, right now, you want to solve: pick go. We are using some Go at my company because we wanted to follow the trend, but frankly unless you want to built a simple system with no dependencies, Go is not ready to solve problem «right now» either, because the ecosystem is still really poor. If you have a problem, right now, you want to solve, you should probably still pick Java over Go, even if a lot of people (me included) don't like Java … Basically I think Java is the most important factor of success of the Go language: Go feels like Java, but in a younger and trendier way. > We don't need to pretend rust is general high level language you should pick up and use for any problem domain. It's not. You're shooting yourself in the foot if you use it as though it was. Rust is a «general high level language», with the same high-level generality than Go or Java. I bet one can chose any* Go or Java code sample, and rewrite it in Rust with around the same amount of code and without introducing any memory issues (what you wouldn't be able to do in C or C++). I think that's a good illustration of Rust being a «general high level language». *unless it depends on a library that has no equivalent in Rust (as I said before, the youth of Rust's ecosystem is the reason not to use Rust in S1 2016). > and it is hard to learn. It is indeed, no discussion about that.
lmm 10y ago
Rust's type system is a bit less awful, and it's better oriented towards immutability-by-default. Its concurrency model is more explicit (which is to say, more verbose to use, but gives you a lot more control). In a situation where Go is acceptable (i.e. GC is acceptable) you should probably be looking at OCaml (probably what I'd recommend; http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2013/06/09/choosing-a-python-replacement-for-0install/ http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2013/06/09/choosing-a-python-r... may be worth a look) or Haskell rather than Rust though. If you're talking about a long-running server process then I'd add Scala/Ceylon/F# to the list.

Can anyone convince me to use Rust over Go, or the other way around? My target machines range from i7s with massive amounts of RAM to Raspberry Pi with slightly-less-massive amounts of RAM.

Drdrdrq 10y ago

Well, I can't do that (haven't used any of them enough for that) but I find it telling that Rust is missing from the slide where they compare the languages... :)

FlyingSnake 10y ago

> Rust over Go Rust: Best suited for writing OS, network stack, embedded systems, and webservers like Nginx. Go: Best suited for writing micro-services, CRUD apps, API servers etc pick your poison

egeozcan 10y ago
I did write a CRUD app with Go and after that experience, IMHO, for CRUD apps, one is better off with a dynamic language (JS, Ruby, Python) or a static one which supports generics (C#, Java) or Macros (Nim).
- fortytw2 10y ago
  Right on. Go is best suited for network-heavy, concurrent applications (infrastructure systems, databases, OS-tools), or software that needs to be dead easy to set up / deploy (single static binary, free cross-platform compilation). If you want to go build a CRUD app, use RoR/Django/Whatever(tm) and be happy with it

shadowmint 10y ago

I think the tldr; of this (often raised...) argument boils down to: Don't use rust if you're asking that question. If you could implement your solution in go or rust, then go is probably a more appropriate choice; it's a good high level solution for high level problems. Rust is not a good solution for high level problems; it's a good solution for low level problems where go would be a terrible choice; and it's a good solution for high level problems where other choices are even worse (eg. C++). They're both good languages, and you'll learn way more from picking up rust than you will from picking up go, so if you're just screwing around and want to learn a language this year, absolutely, pick rust or clojure. Go isn't on the list for 'interesting programming languages'. ...but if you have an actual problem you're trying to solve, I would be hard pressed to enumerate the reasons why you would pick rust if the problem was solvable using go. Maybe because your C dependencies would be easier to call from rust than go? That's all I can think of.

stymaar 10y ago
> Rust is not a good solution for high level problems Who is saying that ? Not the Rust team, nor the Rust users … Rust is a general purpose programming language, and it's pretty high-level (in terms of features, think about functional programming for instance). The only reason I wouldn't advise everyone to write their stuff in Rust atm, is the youth of the ecosystem (which is growing rapidly, but is still a bit too early-stage): their is no intrinsic limitation in the language that make Rust «not a good solution».
- shadowmint 10y ago
  I'm saying it. The piston developers are doing what right now? Writing a new programming language (dyon). Why are they doing that? Because rust is great for prototyping games in? no. ...rust is verbose. It is statically typed, it is less productive than some other languages and it is hard to learn. Now, you get a whole lot of other benefits in exchange for that, absolutely, and technically speaking, rust is a super awesome and sophisticated language. ...but right now, it has neither the ecosystem nor simplicity for picking up and practically solving high level problems. If you have a problem, right now, you want to solve: pick go. ...unless your problem is something that rust would be better at, and those things are low level things, like building game engines, not high level things like building web applications and cross platform desktop chat applications or machine learning solutions to driving cars. You can build high level applications in rust, and in C++; the point I'm making is that unless you actually have a reason for picking them (and there are plenty...), don't. Pick the tool for the job; rust is a great tool for the right job. Go is a better tool for a lot of applications; and a totally useless one for others. /shrug. We don't need to pretend rust is general high level language you should pick up and use for any problem domain. It's not. You're shooting yourself in the foot if you use it as though it was.
  - stymaar 10y ago
    > The piston developers are doing what right now? Writing a new programming language (dyon). Why are they doing that? Because rust is great for prototyping games in? I agree with that, Rust is not a scripting language. Dynamically-typed scripting languages have proven their efficiency for prototyping. > rust is verbose. It is statically type, it is less productive than some other languages Than scripting languages yes, but it's exactly on the same side than Go on this point. Scripting languages are extremely convenient for small projects, but are more difficult to maintain in the long run if the project grows too big. (I personally live coding JavaScript, and a the project grows we are progressively add a static-typing layer (flowtype.org) to our code for the sake of maintenance). > it has neither the ecosystem nor simplicity for picking up and practically solving high level problems. There is a real trade-off between scripting languages (Python, Ruby and Nodejs), and statically-typed ones (Java, Go, and Rust), but it's not related to being high-level or not. In term of abstractions and features, Rust is at least as high-level as Java & Go. > If you have a problem, right now, you want to solve: pick go. We are using some Go at my company because we wanted to follow the trend, but frankly unless you want to built a simple system with no dependencies, Go is not ready to solve problem «right now» either, because the ecosystem is still really poor. If you have a problem, right now, you want to solve, you should probably still pick Java over Go, even if a lot of people (me included) don't like Java … Basically I think Java is the most important factor of success of the Go language: Go feels like Java, but in a younger and trendier way. > We don't need to pretend rust is general high level language you should pick up and use for any problem domain. It's not. You're shooting yourself in the foot if you use it as though it was. Rust is a «general high level language», with the same high-level generality than Go or Java. I bet one can chose any* Go or Java code sample, and rewrite it in Rust with around the same amount of code and without introducing any memory issues (what you wouldn't be able to do in C or C++). I think that's a good illustration of Rust being a «general high level language». *unless it depends on a library that has no equivalent in Rust (as I said before, the youth of Rust's ecosystem is the reason not to use Rust in S1 2016). > and it is hard to learn. It is indeed, no discussion about that.

lmm 10y ago

Rust's type system is a bit less awful, and it's better oriented towards immutability-by-default. Its concurrency model is more explicit (which is to say, more verbose to use, but gives you a lot more control). In a situation where Go is acceptable (i.e. GC is acceptable) you should probably be looking at OCaml (probably what I'd recommend; http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2013/06/09/choosing-a-python-replacement-for-0install/ http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2013/06/09/choosing-a-python-r... may be worth a look) or Haskell rather than Rust though. If you're talking about a long-running server process then I'd add Scala/Ceylon/F# to the list.